I am currently doing a bunch of playing with 2.1-DEV & isp native ipv6 so i did not start snort, squid or any other services just yet. Will look forward to enable more stuff in a few and make sure to update this post if i notice anything special.

For now, its been running non-stop for about a week, components are at room temperature and cpu is 100% idle. The build should definitly handle snort & squid for my use.

If anyone ever get this same atom/board working on a larger net id be curious to know how it perform.

This is very much what I am planning to do. I am going with an MSI IM-945 GSE with its N270 Atom and dual intel gigabit nics, while hoping to add some sort of mini pci-e wifi atheros based card to add on an AP with some sort of external antenna array. Motherboard is in transit, and have the drive and 1gb of ram ready to go. For now I'm going with an open case - probably a chunk of plywood until I can convince my wife that $100 is acceptable for a case.
I also will go with a Molson Product for beverage.